On Saturday May 12, 2001, UIC Vice Chancellor Stanton Delaney ordered UIC Police to arrest Reverend John Johnson unless he immediately left with his old school bus that was sitting in an empty lot on Halsted by O'Brien Street in the old Maxwell Street neighborgood. Reverend Johnson and his wife were selling Blues tapes and records from the bus at a location one block north of the record store from which they were unfairly expelled in November of 2000.
"That neighborhood is historic to my people and to people all over the world who love Blues,” says Reverend Johnson. “It is important to keep a representation of this music in the area. That's what I do. For the last several years, I was the only Black merchant in the neighborhood. UIC coerced me to leave in November because they said everyone would be gone by the beginning of the year. To this day, five merchants remain in the neighborhood and all are white. They did not have to kick me out and kick me out so early to force me to lose the lucrative holiday business. I'm not hurting no one. I am part of the history of this community. People want and need my Blues records. Students come by and they like me too. UIC may be able to take the buildings but they shouldn't take our history too."
Reverend Johnson and his Blues Bus have been a fixture in the Maxwell Street neighborhood for more than 30 years. From Hardscrapple, Missouri, he came to Chicago, obtained an old school bus and turned it into a music store, located first at 14th Street and Halsted. When the old Market closed in 1994, Johnson opened a permanent store, called Heritage Blues Bus Music, on Halsted close Maxwell Street, next door to Jim's Original Hot Dog Stand. When told by UIC officials, in late 2000, that he would have to vacate his store because all the other merchants would soon be out too, he reluctantly complied, leaving in November of 2000.
"They lied to me about the necessity of me being out of there,” says Reverend Johnson. ”It's not hurting anyone for me to sell tapes out of my school bus. It is a tradition down here and is not in the way of any of their new construction."
Roosevelt University Professor Steve Balkin says, "Reverend Johnson and his Blues Bus are world famous. Pictures of that bus are in many books about Chicago Blues history. His store, next to Jim's Original, was a living museum. Blues musicians came by from all over to visit there and wrote their names on the wall. He gave the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition space on its walls and in the windows to display historic photos and artifacts. When college students came by, he would take the time to talk to them and tell them about the history of Blues. Since he is also an ordained Pentecostal minister, he ministered to the needs of people on the street and, from time-to-time, hired youth from the ABLA projects to do chores for him and listened to their problems. What UIC has done to Reverend Johnson confirms that the UIC South Campus Expansion is not about buildings and was never about buildings. It's about people, poor and working class people, and their removal from the neighborhood and from the city."
Dr. Janelle Walker, a folkorist recently of Indiana University, comments, "Reverend Johnson and Mrs. Johnson, in an authentic, gentle, and dignified way, have a calling to keep this African-American folk tradition alive in the historic old Maxwell Street neighborhood. UIC's History Department and its Hull-House Museum should be honoring them for being an intellectual and cultural presence in that area. What the Johnsons are doing is more in keeping with UIC's rhetorical urban mission statement than upscale condo/retail developments. Rich people, even rich white people, like Blues music and college students like that music too. It is, after all, the root music of rock and roll. It seems, however, that UIC administrators are so ignorant of the area's culture and so blinded by hatred of anything that seems of working class grassroots culture, that they lash out to totally cleanse the area of its rich African-American past."
You can contact: Reverend John Johnson at 708-862-5146.
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Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition
P.O. Box 6435
Evanston, IL 60204